Recently updated on January 31st, 2022 at 02:32 pm
Providing different shipping options on your WordPress eCommerce store is a great way to keep customers happy and reduce your abandoned cart rate. By using the built-in options in WooCommerce, you can already offer a range of shipping options for your visitors.
There are also additional plugins available (some free, some with an annual license cost) that allow you to offer more customised shipping methods and more accurate postage costs.
WooCommerce Standard Shipping Options
- Flat Rate
You can charge a fixed cost using product shipping classes* or per order or by individual products.
- Free shipping
This can be offered across your entire product catalogue, or only if certain rules are met, eg. when the order total is over $150.
- Click & Collect
Simply identify the areas or postcodes that qualify.
These three default shipping options are quick and easy to set up and very customisable. They could be all you need when you start selling online.
* If you have products with very different shipping costs, eg. spare parts and large appliances, you can set up a shipping class for each product type. You can also use these classes to determine the shipping costs in the checkout process.
WooCommerce Extensions
and
Plugins for Custom Shipping
Using third party plugins lets you increase the WooCommerce shipping options or offer real-time shipping costs and services from main carriers like Australia Post or TNT Express. These shipping plugins allow you to optimise logistics and accurately determine postage costs. They can also generate shipping labels or provide tracking numbers based on postcodes.
Some shipping plugins for WooCommerce commonly used by Spark include WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping and Australia Post WooCommerce Extension.
WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping
The table rates plugin enables you to set up and define shipping rates depending on location vs shipping class, price, weight, or item count. It can be used for both domestic and international deliveries.
The user interface has been designed to make the process of adding, duplicating and removing rates as intuitive as possible.
Australia Post WooCommerce Extension
In your WooCommerce shipping settings, you can see this WordPress plugin integrates the Australia Post service. It will calculate the Domestic shipping costs and the delivery time for your online customer.
These domestic shipping options are supported: Regular Post, Express Post and Courier Post. You can disable/enable one or all of these options. It also supports estimated shipping delivery times and allows you to set up shipping zones for local pickups.
For accurate shipping costs, all products should have the weight and dimensions added. However, the plugin allows you to set a default weight and dimensions so a cost can still be displayed if the information is not available.
These features are all available in the free version. There is also a Pro version for a single purchase cost. Additional features in the Pro version include:
- International shipping
- Customised Domestic shipping
- Pre-paid domestic satchels
- Letters shipping
- Courier shipping
Ask us more about shipping options for your eCommerce site – we can ensure your store meets all your customers’ requirements while giving you the control you need over shipping costs!
